December Theme: LCMS Partners

Walking together in the Gospel

We Lutherans love Jesus, mercy work, bearing witness to Christ, holding potlucks and engaging in hearty singing and weighty Bible studies. We also love acronyms: CUS, CPH, CPS, CHI, LCEF, LLL, LWML. (Can you name the organizations these acronyms stand for? If not, visit the links on the right to learn more.) They’re unassuming — these little alphabet soup clusters of letters — but the work Christ does through them is anything but!

One of the distinct joys we share as the body of Christ is our ability to work together. We don’t go off on our own. We don’t operate apart from those with whom we confess the faith. We don’t endeavor to do it all by ourselves. We work together. We listen to each other. We forgive each other. We have fun together! And we serve one another, walking together in great joy.

Paul understood this in full, encouraging Christians to join together in “partnership in the gospel” (Phil. 1:5). And we are still heeding his words today! That’s why it doesn’t take much digging to realize that Christ is working mightily in the LCMS and that we can, by His grace, do more together than we can accomplish in dark corners working by ourselves.

Just take a look at all of our partners. They serve in their own alphabet soup variety of vocations, from global missions to health benefits, from investments and loans to liberal arts education, from partner church bodies to the Synod’s archives. And they do it all for the well-being and care of individual members of the LCMS, each of her congregations, all of the 35 districts, even the Synod at-large. The impact they make is one we all share, and each one provides a new way for Lutherans like you and me to get involved in our communities and around the world.

We Lutherans love Jesus, and we love our acronyms too, because they are proof that the Lord blesses, that He rejoices to work through us for the good of our neighbor, that He can use an alphabet soup of Lutherans working together to accomplish truly wonderful things.

Join us this December in giving special thanks for our partners in the Gospel, and ask God to bless our work together according to His will.